2. Overload

You will never grow by pushing the same amount of weight workout after workout.

If the next workout isn’t more challenging, you will stagnate.

3. Progressive Resistance

In order to achieve muscular overload, you have to increase the resistance you are lifting from workout to workout.

By adding a little bit of weight to the bar, while simultaneously decreasing the reps, you’ll be able to constantly grow your strength and keep maximum stress on the working muscle.

4. Intensity

Intensity is all about the amount of effort that goes into your training.

You’ll get absolutely nowhere by cruising through your workout on auto pilot.

You need to bring 100% focus to each session. Your resistance level should make the last couple of reps on each set extremely difficult.

If you feel that you could pump out another 2 or three reps, you should add more resistance.

5. Time Under Tension

Time under tension (TUT) refers to the amount of time that the working muscle is put under direct stress during a training set.

The ideal length of a set to stimulate growth is 40 seconds.

This is longer than most sets typically last. Increase your TUT by slowing down, especially on the lowering part of the rep.

You should also avoid locking out at the top, as this relieves the tension.

6. Rep Range

This is longer than most sets typically last.

Increase your TUT by slowing down, especially on the lowering part of the rep.

You should also avoid locking out at the top, as this relieves the tension.

There’s been a lot of debate about the ideal rep range to build muscle.

The traditional line has been that you need to perform between 8-12 reps per set to stimulate hypertrophy.

Anything higher than that and you’ll be ‘defining’ the muscle. Go lower than six and you’ll be primarily building power.

7. Volume

This is another area where there is huge discrepancy.

If you follow the programs outlined in the bodybuilding mags, you’ll likely be in the gym for close to two hours.

On the other extreme are the conventional ‘hard-gainer’ programs that advocate very short, intense sessions that conserve energy and prevent over training.

Again, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

An ideal training time of 45-60 minutes will allow you to provide your muscles with enough time under tension to maximally stimulate growth without overtraining.

8. Rest Between Sets

As a hard gainer, the length of rest between sets is critical.

Most hard gainers find that their strength quickly dissipates after the first set.

Resting for the typical 60-90 seconds will not provide them with sufficient time to replenish their ATP levels for the next set.

This is especially so when performing heavy compound exercises, like the bench press.

By extending your rest period out to between two and a half and three minutes, you will be able to get much more from the next set.

9. Tempo

Tempo is the speed with which you perform your reps. We can break the rep down into two parts; the concentric, or positive part, and the eccentric, or negative part.

Science tells us that the eccentric part is the most important for building muscle.

Most trainers perform both parts too fast. Slowing down so that you’re doing a 1-2 second concentric and a 2-3 second eccentric rep will increase your time under tension and put more stress on the muscle.​

10. Variation

The human body is amazingly adaptable.

If you’re doing the same workout month after month, your body will become accustomed to your routine and you are likely to hit a plateau.

By changing it up every couple of months, you’ll keep your body guessing – and growing.

11. Recuperation

You don’t build muscle in the gym.

It’s recuperation and nutrition that does that.

Your workout is actually breaking the muscle cell down.

It’s when you rest that you are able to rebuild it.

As a hard-gainer, you need more rest than most.

That’s why you’ll be limiting your training to four days per week, allowing a minimum of 48 hours between working each body part.​

12. Isolation

To effectively stimulate a muscle group, you need it to be the prime mover during an exercise.

When training your chest, for example, retracting your shoulders, keeping your hips down and maintaining a slight arch in your back will maximize chest stimulation.

Isolation of the working muscle group is also why you should not allow momentum to get the weight from Point A to Point B.

13. Body-Part Order

When structuring your workout, you should start with your largest muscle groups﻿ (chest, back, legs) and then move to your smaller groups.

If you did it the other way around, your arms, calves and shoulders would be major weak links when hitting your chest, back and thighs because they’d already be exhausted.

Post Workout

Bedtime

Supplementation Reminders

The human body was meant to eat real food, so do not go overboard on protein powder

Make sure to get your post workout shake into your system within 20 minutes of working out

Consistency is the key to effective supplementation

Organizing Your Diet

The key thing each day is meet your caloric and macronutrient goals.

In terms of how it is absorbed in to your system, the timing of those calories doesn’t really matter.

However, as a hard-gainer you probably don’t have the greatest of appetites.

That will make it pretty tough to get in your calories from three meals.

That’s the reason that you should spread those calories out over the day – it will be easier for you to digest smaller, more frequent meals.

We suggest 4-6 meals, spaced about three hours apart.

Here’s a template to give you an idea of what your daily eating might look like . . .​

Your Daily Nutritional Template

Now you can eat 2-3 big, infrequent meals each day or you can eat 3-6 smaller frequent meals, it does not matter.

But for you guys, it's probably better to stick to frequent, smaller meals as it's hard to get giant meals down and yet meet our calorie requirements.

The key here is to find what works for you.

Eating 7-8 times a day is nearly impossible for most of us but personally I have found 4-5 times to be ideal for me.

Here's an example diet you could follow. And also you can always switch out some foods for something else.

Like instead of steak, you could have chicken or eggs (both very valuable sources of protein).

Meal

Food

Meal 1

Protein / Fiber

Rolled oats with 1 scoop whey protein​

Meal 2

Protein / Fruit / Nuts

​Tuna / Apple / Walnuts

Meal 3

Protein / Starchy Carb / Vegetables

Steak / Sweet Potato / Green Beans​

Meal 4

Protein / Fats

2 hard boiled eggs / Avocado​

Pre Workout

5-15g BCAA's, 5g Glutamine

Post Workout

Protein Shake with skim milk and 5g creatine monohydrate

Meal 5

Protein / Strachy Carb / Vegetables

Chicken / Brown Rice / Carrots / Broccoli​

Meal 6

Casein Protein Shake

How Much Weight Can You Gain?

The reason that so many guys throw in the towel on this whole muscle gain thing is that they’ve been fed unrealistic expectations.

You know by now that 25 pounds of muscle in 25 days is out there in la la land.

But, as a hard-gainer, so is 5 pounds in 25 days.

More realistic for you is between one and two pounds of lean muscle gain per month. That’s between 12-24 pounds of mass in a year of real, fat free, visible mass.

If you’re 170 pounds now, imagine what a transformation being at 194 with the same body fat level would make.

That is what you need to set your sights on.

Final Words

I don't expect you to understand and get everything right from the beginning.

Everyone starts from step one.

No one is born an expert at bodybuilding nor do they step foot into the gym as the hulk from day one. ​

Everyone has a story. And yours starts here.

You will continuously get advice and they may sound better and they might as well be, or they might be pure bro-science, it doesn't matter because if you stick to the basics and what works, you will make progress.

Nader Qudimat

Forged by the iron and cold steel, Nader takes his knowledge and hulks it up into this site.
Having to be stuck as a 110lb skinny guy in the early days, he has had no choice but to keep improving himself until he cannot.
Click here to check out his 12 year transformation: Natural 12 Year Transformation

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